"The people of Scotland are to be offered a historic opportunity to devise a federal future for their country before next year's general election, it emerged on Saturday night, as a shock new poll gave the campaign for independence a narrow lead for the first time.

Amid signs of panic and recrimination among unionist ranks about the prospects of a yes vote on 18 September, the Observer has learned that a devolution announcement designed to halt the nationalist bandwagon is due to be made within days by the anti-independence camp.

The plan, in the event of a no vote, is that people from all parts of Scottish society – rather than just politicians – would be invited to take part in a Scottish conference or convention that would decide on further large-scale transfers of power from London to Holyrood."

Prof Jay said: “Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the police gave no priority to child sex exploitation, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.”

It emerged that there had been three previous reports into the problem which had been suppressed or ignored by officials, either because they did not like or did not believe the findings.

Yesterday’s report concluded that by far the majority of perpetrators were Asian men, and said council officials had been unwilling to address the issue for fear of being labelled racist.

Worth noting that in this story the ethnicity of the perpetrators appears to fluctuate between "Asian" and "Pakistani" depending on which paper you read.

Many teachers say they strive to teach their students to be critical thinkers. They even pride themselves on it; after all, who wants children to just take in knowledge passively? But there is a problem with the widespread treatment of critical thinking as a skill to be taught.

The truth is that you can't teach people to be critical unless you are critical yourself. This involves more than asking young people to "look critically" at something, as if criticism was a mechanical task.

What do we think of this, DU? I think it could do with some criticism...

I would suggest to anyone interested in the practice to research it outwith the field of fiction and entirely outwith the field of political message boards. The most appropriate source of information on the subject is people who practice BDSM, not people who have no idea what it is beyond what it looks like and are liable to reach for whatever explanation of it seems to justify their emotional reaction to it.

Do NOT, repeat NOT absorb information about BDSM from non-practitioners. NEVER absorb unprocessed information about it from fantasists or phobics.

(from a subthread on why the justification for the Iraq War was so widely believed by some and so obviously a pile of stinking bullshit to others...)

There's a switch that usually gets flipped roundabout your 20s when you realise that all the cuddly stories you've been told about how things are are made up by people and the cold hard ground you stand on is something different altogether and you'd better find out what it is.

People who never flip the switch from "I have to believe" to "I guess I'd better find out" reach for solutions that make them happy. If there's never any negative feedback that clearly impacts their own physical comfort or circumstances, they stick with the original thinking. They don't need to behave as if the world's real.

That's where the whole "they hate our freedoms" thing came from. It was the explanation that made them feel good. It had nothing to do with the enemy. They just spurted out whatever qualities they needed the enemy to possess in order to make them feel good about themselves in contrast.

It's an extremely common phenomenon. "I declare that you have whatever personality flaw I need you to have in order to make my behaviour look reasonable!" (It happens right here on this website...)

It's easier for some people than others. It's very easy for people who have never had to sacrifice anything or fight for anything, particularly the rich.

We rail against the self-absorption of the privileged but very often their lives have never in fact provided them with the opportunity to reconsider their mythology.

A lot of us are on this site because circumstances forced us to change our footing. If I wasn't gay I might not ever have developed the critical faculties to sniff out the bullshit that reeks so heavily to us and smells so fragrant to the self-absorbed bullshitters.